


Double Life

by badly_knitted



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 13:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5542100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badly_knitted/pseuds/badly_knitted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy feels torn in two by the double life she has to lead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my own prompt ‘BtVS, Buffy Summers. By day she's a schoolgirl, by night she's the Slayer. Sometimes she wonders which is the real Buffy,’ at fic_promptly.
> 
> **Setting:** Season 1.

By day she’s a schoolgirl and by night she’s the Slayer. Sometimes she wonders which is the real Buffy and which is the mask she wears to conceal her secret identity.

Her mom thinks she’s just an ordinary teenager with some behavioural issues and a tendency to get into trouble, while half the time Giles treats her like a warrior instead of a person. If it wasn’t for Willow and Xander, she thinks she might go nuts, if she hasn’t already.

Hiding her Slayer activities from her mom has always been difficult, but since moving to Sunnydale, it’s gotten even harder. In a place so full of demons and monsters, she’s almost never off duty. She hates seeing the look of disappointment in her mom’s eyes every time the school calls about her skipping classes, or starting fights, and she hates knowing how much her mom worries about her, but if she knew the truth she’d worry even more. So she lies to protect her mom from the truth, and she knows it’s for the best, but that doesn’t make her feel any better about doing it.

The burden of guilt over everything she’s putting her mum through weighs her down, so for her mother’ sake, she puts on the carefree teenager mask and acts like everything is completely normal. Then at night she puts on dark clothes, slips into her Slayer persona, picks up her stake, and sneaks out of her bedroom window to patrol.

She feels split in two, wanting to be a normal girl yet bound by her duty as the Slayer. She’s scared she’s losing some important part of who she is somewhere between the two faces she shows the world, some essence of Buffy that’s leaking away every time she switches from one to the other. One day, it might all be gone and then she’s not sure what, if anything, will be left. How much of yourself can you lose before all that remains is a dried up husk? That’s something she hopes she never has to find out.

The End


End file.
